Tiger, Flipkart lead $7.7m round for India's Cube26
Tiger Global and Flipkart have led a INR500 million ($7.7 million) seed round for Cube26, an India-based developer of gesture control technology for smart phones.
It is the first round of institutional funding for Cube26, which has been bootstrapped to this point. The company told Livemint it will use the capital to double the size of its team by the end of 2016 and to open a new data science research center in Bangalore.
Cube26 develops software for smart phone manufacturers to help them implement control schemes for their products based on gestures, such as facial expressions and eye movements. Its hardware partners include Fujitsu, Micromax, and Panasonic.
In addition to mobile device makers, the company has recently begun to partner with e-commerce players, including Flipkart and its subsidiary Myntra, to help with customer acquisition.
Founded in California in 2012 under the name PredictGaze, Cube26 now claims that its software can be found on five million mobile devices. It also claims revenue of INR10 million per month.
Tiger and Flipkart both have several recent investments in the mobile software space to their credit. Tiger led a $5 million Series A round for fashion-oriented social network Roposo in March, and another $5 million Series A round for local services marketplace LocalOye in April.
Tiger has also participated in several funding rounds for Flipkart, including a $700 million round last December, and in addition has partnered with the e-commerce giant to invest INR760 million in online home rental platform NestAway in July.
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